Mao

by Philip Short

  44. NCH, Nov. 11 and 18 1911.

  45. Snow, p. 166.

  46. McCord, p. 120. The British consul estimated that by the end of November, 50,000 Hunanese soldiers had left Changsha for Wuchang, Shasi, Chenzhou and Sichuan, and 20,000 to 30,000 remained (Giles, Despatch no. 49 of Dec. 1 1911, F0228/1798).

  47. NCH, Dec. 2 1911, p. 594.

  48. Giles, Despatch no. 50 of Dec. 20 1911, FO228/1798.

  49. I have assumed that Mao was attached to the 50th Regiment since, at the time he signed up, the 49th was in Hubei (Esherick, p. 238). Giles (Despatch no. 50) appears to have confused the two units.

  50. Li Yuanhong, quoted in McCord, p. 135.

  51. Emi Siao, p. 28.

  52. McCord, p. 135.

  53. This and the following section are drawn from Snow, p. 166.

  54. NCH, Feb. 24, p. 506, and May 18 1912, p. 467.

  55. Giles, Despatch no. 50.

  56. Hume, p. 165.

  57. NCH, Jan. 13 1912, p. 105.

  58. NCH, Feb. 17 1912, p. 441; Snow, p. 167.

  59. McCord, pp. 119–20; McDonald, Urban Origins, pp. 22–3.

  60. Snow, p. 167.

  CHAPTER 3 LORDS OF MISRULE

  1. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (SW), vol. 4, Beijing, 1967, p. 412.

  2. Esherick, Reform and Revolution, pp. 237–49.

  3. NCH, Dec. 30 1911, p. 872.

  4. Hume, Doctors East, Doctors West, pp. 159 and 165–6.

  5. NCH, Dec. 30 1911, p. 872; Jan. 20 1912, p. 173.

  6. This and the following section are drawn from Snow, Red Star over China, pp. 167–70. Mao told Snow he entered the Normal School in 1912 (p. 174), but in this, as in many other cases, he is a year out.

  7. Ibid., p. 162.

  8. Li Rui, Early Revolutionary Activities, p. 8; Snow, p. 169.

  9. Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought, pt II, pp. 496–7.

  10. Often translated as the General Mirror for Aid in Government. See de Bary, Theodore (ed.), Sources of Chinese Tradition, Columbia University Press, New York, 1960, pp. 493–5.

  11. Mémoires concernant I'Histoire … des Chinois, Tome 1, Paris, 1776, p. 86.

  12. Snow, p. 166.

  13. Scalapino, Robert A., and Yu, George T., The Chinese Anarchist Movement, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1961, p. 38; Dirlik, Arif, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991, pp. 121–3.

  14. Snow, p. 170.

  15. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, pp. 9n and 487–8.

  16. Snow, p. 171.

  17. Schram, l, pp. 175–313 (Winter 1917).

  18. Ibid., pp. 5–6 (June 1912).

  19. Ibid., p. 63 (June 25 1915).

  20. Ibid., p. 139 (Sept. 23 1917).

  21. Ibid., p. 132 (Aug. 23 1917).

  22. Ibid., p. 66 (Summer 1915).

  23. Ibid., p. 67 (July 1915).

  24. Ibid., pp. 61–65 (May and June 1915).

  25. Ibid., p. 103 (July 25 1916).

  26. Ibid., p. 113 (April 1 1917).

  27. Ibid., pp. 121 and 124 (April 1 1917).

  28. Ibid., pp. 117 and 120 (April 1 1917).

  29. Ibid., pp. 133–4 (Aug. 23 1917).

  30. Ibid., p. 138 (Sept. 16 1917).

  31. Ibid., pp. 201; 204–5, 208, 251 and 273 (Winter 1917). [See also pp. 280–1.] These remarks have been conflated from a much broader body of text because Mao repeatedly returned to the same idea from different viewpoints at different points in his notes.

  32. Ibid., p. 310 (Winter 1917).

  33. Ibid., p. 77 (Sept. 6 1915).

  34. Ibid., pp. 263–4 (Winter 1917).

  35. Ibid., p. 118 (April 1 1917).

  36. Ibid., p. 69 (July 1915).

  37. Ibid., pp. 237–8 and 247 (Winter 1917).

  38. Ibid., p. 130 (Aug. 23 1917).

  39. Ibid., p. 62 (June 25 1915).

  40. Ibid., pp. 77–9 (Sept. 6 1915).

  41. Ibid., pp. 128–9 (Summer 1917).

  42. Ibid.,p. 132 (Aug. 23 1917).

  43. Ibid., p. 249 (Winter 1917).

  44. Ibid., p. 139 (Sept. 23 1917).

  45. The term ‘Xinhai’, like all cyclical year-names, is not normally translated. ‘Xin’ is the eighth of the celestial stems, whose affinity is iron; ‘hai’ is the tenth of the twelve terrestrial branches represented by zodiacal animals and denotes the Year of the Pig.

  46. Snow, p. 169.

  47. See NCH, May 8 1915, p. 422; June 5, p. 715.

  48. Li Rui, p. 25.

  49. Ibid., p. 50; Schram, 1, p. 85 (Winter 1915).

  50. McDonald, Urban Origins, pp. 26–8. For the mutiny, see also NCH, May 20 and 27 1916; on Tang's disguise, NCH, Sept. 23, p. 617, and Hume, p. 241; on the blood-letting, North China Daily News, Shanghai, July 20 and 21 1916. The same newspaper reported in a despatch dated July 29 that ‘the situation in Hunan has improved’ (July 31).

  51. Schram, 1, pp. 92 (June 24), 93 (June 26) and 7 (July 18 1916).

  52. Hume, pp. 238–40.

  53. McDonald (p. 25) says this took place in ‘the long-disused Provincial Examination hall’. The hall had been demolished years earlier, and new buildings belonging to the Hunan Education Association erected in their place (Hume, p. 160).

  54. Li Rui, p. 47. McCord (Power of the Gun, p. 196, n. 125) quotes two Chinese sources as giving figures of 15,000 and 16,000 deaths. Mao (Schram, 1, p. 95) says ‘well over 10,000’.

  55. The Shanghai newspaper, Shibao, called Hunan 'a world of terror’ (March 14 1914, quoted in McCord, p. 198, n. 136). Hume (p. 240) said Tang's rule was ‘a reign of terror’. Hunan members of parliament telegraphed President Li Yuanhong after Tang's fall with ‘a very powerful, indeed shocking, indictment’ of his ‘rule with an iron hand’ (North China Daily News, 15 July 1916), and subsequently impeached him (Shibao, Nov. 29 1916).

  56. NCH, May 15 1915, p. 449.

  57. McCord, pp. 193 and 195–8; see also NCH, Sept. 23 1916, p. 616. The quotation beginning ‘Detectives are everywhere’ is from Shibao, July 31 1914.

  58. Li Rui, p. 47.

  59. Schram, 1, pp. 94–8 (July 18 1916).

  60. Ibid., p. 95.

  61. Ibid., p. 6 (June 1912).

  62. Ibid., pp. 100–1 (July 25 1916).

  63. In 1917, Mao wrote: ‘Those that can be called men today are three in number: Yuan Shikai, Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei’ (ibid., p. 131; see also p. 76 [Sept. 6 1915]).

  64. In his marginal notes on System der Ethik (ibid., Winter 1917, p. 276), Mao wrote Yuan's name against Paulsen's line: ‘What makes a tyrant a tyrant is that … he seeks only pleasure and power.’ By September 1920, Mao was speaking of ‘Bandit Yuan’ and ‘Butcher Tang’ (ibid., p. 552, Sept. 6–7 1920; see also p. 529, n. 14).

  65. Ibid., p. 141, n. l (September 1917).

  66. Siao Yu, Mao Tse-tung and I, pp. 37–40.

  67. Schram, 1, p. 63 (June 25 1915).

  68. Mao told Edgar Snow he inserted it as an advertisement in a Changsha newspaper (Red Star, p. 172). He told friends at the time he had merely ‘posted [it] in several schools’ (Schram, Mao's Road, 1, pp. 81–2 and 84); Snow, p. 172.

  69. Li Rui, p. 74; Schram, 1, p. 81 (Sept. 27 1915).

  70. This is a quotation from the Shi jing, the Book of Poetry.

  71. Snow, p. 172.

  72. Li explained later that when he had first met Mao, he had just arrived in Changsha from his village. Mao seemed so well-educated that he felt completely inadequate (Pantsov and Levine, p. 48).

  73. Mao wrote that autumn that ‘five or six people responded’ (Schram, 1, p. 84, Nov. 9 1915).

  74. Snow, p. 172.

  75. Li Rui, p. 29.

  76. Snow, p. 173.

  77. Schram, 1, p. 69 (July 1915).

  78. Ibid., p. 60 (April 5 1915).

  79. Beijing daxue yuekan, Jan. 28 1920.

  80. Schram, 1, pp. 72 (August) and 84 (Nov. 9 1915).

  81. Li Rui, pp. 44–6.

  82. Schram, 1, pp. 73–
4 (August 1915).

  83. Siao Yu, p. 36.

  84. Li Rui, pp. 41–2. Snow (p. 175) quotes Mao as saying he spent 160 dollars while at the Normal School (actually in the six-and-a-half years from 1912 to 1918, since he specifically includes the period when he paid his ‘numerous registration fees’).

  85. Snow, Ibid. Li Rui, p. 23.

  86. See Schram 1, pp. 9–56 (Oct.–Dec. 1913); pp. 141–2 (September 1917) and pp. 175–310 (Winter 1917).

  87. Snow, p. 170; see also Schram, 1, p. 62 (June 25 1915).

  88. Schram, 1, p. 62 (June 25 1915).

  89. Ibid., p. 84 (Nov.9 1915).

  90. Ibid., p. 85 (Winter 1915).

  91. Ibid., p. 105 (July 25 1916).

  92. Ibid., p. 130 (Aug. 23 1917).

  93. Li Rui, pp. 52–3.

  94. Schram, 1, p. 129 (Summer 1917).

  95. Mao told Edgar Snow that he got the idea for this trip, which took them through five counties, from an article in the Minbao (Snow, p. 171; see also Siao Yu, pp. 96–202). Despite Mao's assertion that ‘peasants fed us and gave us a place to sleep’, their contacts were almost entirely with local gentry, merchants and officials.

  96. Schram, 1, p. 159 (1917).

  97. Ibid., pp. 106 and 131 (Dec. 9 1916 and Aug. 23 1917).

  98. Ibid., p. 135 (Aug. 23 1917).

  99. This election was apparently separate from the ‘Student of the Year’ contest which took place in June (ibid., p. 145, Nov. 1917). Mao became ‘General Affairs Officer’ of the society, which made him its de facto head under the nominal responsibility of the school proctor (ibid., p. 143n; Li Rui, pp. 54–5).

  100. Schram, 1, p. 145 (Nov. 1917).

  101. Ibid., pp. 145–6.

  102. Ibid., p. 68 (July 1915).

  103. Ibid., p. 235 (Winter 1917).

  104. Ibid., p. 115 (April 1917).

  105. Ibid., p. 157 (Winter 1917).

  106. 85 people attended the first day's classes, of whom 30 per cent were adolescents (ibid., pp. 152–3, November 1917).

  107. Ibid., pp. 143–56. Even so progressive a publication as New Youth did not switch completely to the vernacular until January 1918.

  108. Ibid., p. 142. In planning the evening-school courses, Mao stressed that the history lessons, which he taught himself, should try to inculcate ‘patriotic spirit’ (p. 149).

  109. McCord, pp. 245–56; NCH, Sept. 15 1917, p. 594; Oct. 20, p. 85.

  110. McCord, pp. 256–7. See also NCH, Oct. 6 pp. 17–18, Oct. 13, pp. 72 and 85–6; Oct. 20, pp. 152–3; Nov. 3, pp. 253–4 and 272–3.

  111. Schram, l, p. 144 (Oct. 30 1917).

  112. McCord, pp. 257–9; NCH, Nov. 10 1917, pp. 333–4; Nov. 24, p. 463; Dec. 1, pp. 518–20.

  113. Li Rui, pp. 48 and 50–1; Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 43.

  114. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, p. 19, n. 52.

  115. Snow, pp. 169–70. In a letter to Xiao Yu during the unrest in July 1916, Mao wrote, ‘I was in Xiangtan and too timid to venture to the capital, so I waited for the reports of friends before making the trip. I was truly frightened.’ (Schram, 1, p. 97).

  116. Li Rui, p. 48.

  117. McCord, pp. 259–63.

  118. NCH, April 6 1918, p. 21; April 13, pp. 78–9.

  119. Hume, p. 260.

  120. NCH, April 13 1918, p. 80.

  121. NCH, April 20 1918, p. 137.

  122. Ibid., NCH, April 13 1918, p. 79.

  123. NCH, May 25 1918 pp. 452–3; McDonald, pp. 31–2.

  124. NCH, June 1 1918, pp. 501–2.

  125. McCord, pp. 263–4 and 284.

  126. Li Rui, pp. 48–9 and 59; Schram, 1, pp. 167–8 (May 29 1918).

  127. NCH, May 18 1918, pp. 398–9.

  128. Ibid., Sept. 14 1918, p. 626.

  129. Li Rui, p. 85.

  130. Schram, 1, p. 136 (Aug. 23 1917). Although this was written nine months before Mao graduated, evidently nothing had happened in the interim to change it.

  131. Li Rui, pp. 85–6.

  132. Li Rui, pp. 75–6. Mao told Edgar Snow (Red Star, p. 173) that the society was set up in 1917, but this appears to be yet another example of his faulty chronology. Xiao Yu's claim that he was elected secretary is indirectly confirmed by Li Rui, who writes that Mao ‘modestly declined’ the post but omits to say who was appointed instead (Xiao having become in the 1950s a non-person in China). Mao, according to Li, was deputy secretary. See Schram, 1, pp. 81–2 and 164, n.l; Siao Yu, pp. 71–6.

  133. Letter from Luo Xuezan to his grandfather (summer 1918), displayed at the ‘Centenary of Mao's Birth’ exhibition, Natural History Museum, Beijing, December 1993.

  134. See Li Rui, p. 76.

  135. Schram, 1, p. 152 (November 9 1917).

  136. In August 1917, for instance, Mao wrote that Confucian good deeds such as building bridges and repairing roads were ‘laudable’; in 1918, that they had ‘no value at all’ (Ibid., pp. 135 and 211).

  137. Ibid., p. 208 (Winter 1917).

  138. Ibid., p. 208 (Winter 1917).

  139. Ibid., p. 132 (Aug. 23 1917).

  140. Ibid., pp. 249–50 and 306.

  141. Ibid., pp. 131–2 (Aug. 23 1917).

  142. Ibid., p. 164, n.l.

  143. Li Rui, p. 87.

  144. Schram, 1, p. 174 (August 1918).

  CHAPTER 4 A FERMENT OF ‘ISMS’

  1. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, p. 83 (Nov. 9 1915).

  2. Ibid., pp. 172–3 (Aug. 11 1918). See also Siao Yu, Mao Tse-tung and I, pp. 215–16; and Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, p. 123.

  3. Snow, Red Star over China, p. 176. See also Li Rui, Early Revolutionary Activities, p. 85.

  4. Snow, p. 176; Siao Yu, p. 210.

  5. Schram, 1, p. 317 (April 28 1919).

  6. Snow, p. 176.

  7. Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 48.

  8. Snow, p. 176.

  9. Snow, pp. 176–7; Siao Yu, p. 210. See also Kates, George, The Years That Were Fat, Harper, New York, 1952, pp. 20–2; and Strand, David, Rickshaw Beijing, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 29–30.

  10. Snow, p. 177. See also Li Rui, p. 95.

  11. Pantsov and Levine, p. 62.

  12. Snow, pp. 179–80.

  13. Pantsov and Levine, p. 63.

  14. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 1, p. 329 (July 14 1919).

  15. Li Rui, p. 93.

  16. Snow, p. 177.

  17. Ibid., p. 174.

  18. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, pp. 135–6; Wakeman, Frederic, Jnr, History and Will, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973, pp. 115–36.

  19. Schram, 1, p. 135 (Aug. 23 1917).

  20. Ibid., pp. 237–9 (Winter 1917).

  21. See Wakeman, pp. 140–6.

  22. Ibid., pp. 15–52 (Liang Qichao); pp. 156–7 (liberalism); pp. 238–43, 251 and 257 (Wang Yangming); pp. 82–5 (Wang Fuzhi). See also Li Rui, pp. 17–19 and 24–7.

  23. Mao's acceptance and subsequent rejection of Kang Youwei's utopianism in the autumn and winter of 1917 are one example; his views on immortality are another. Having written in December 1916: ‘ [it is] the amount of one's achievement which is really immortal’ (ibid., p. 107), a year later he condemned as ‘stupid’ the idea of trying to leave behind a reputation (ibid., p. 240; see also p. 253).

  24. Schram, 1, p. 130.

  25. Several articles appeared in the first two issues of Laodong (labour), in March and April 1918 (Luk, Michael Y. M., The Origins of Chinese Bolshevism, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 18–19). See also Dirlik, Arif, The Origins of Chinese Communism, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 26–8. Li Dazhao published a comparison of the French and Russian revolutions in New Youth in July 1918, but it was less specific and drew less attention than his November article.

  26. de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, pp. 863–5. Li, like many of his contemporaries, among them the editor of Chenbao, Chen Puxian, who played a key role in popularising Marxist texts, had studied in Japan and initially obtained most of his knowledge of Marxism from Japa
nese publications (see Ishikawa Yoshihiro, The Formation of the Chinese Communist Party, Columbia University Press, New York, 2012).

  27. Dirlik, Anarchism, pp. 176–7. See also Scalapino and Yu, The Chinese Anarchist Movement; and Zarrow, Peter, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture, Columbia University Press, New York, 1990.

  28. de Bary, pp. 864–5.

  29. Dirlik, Anarchism, pp. 172–5; Chow Tse-tung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1960, p. 97. See also Li Rui, p. 96. The ‘Society of Cocks Crowing in the Dark’ was founded in 1912. Although Liu Shifu died in 1915, his supporters remained active until 1922; it was they who started the magazine Laodong in the spring of 1918.

  30. Scalapino and Yu, p. 40.

  31. Snow, p. 177.

  32. Schram, 1, p. 380 (July 21 1919).

  33. Strand, pp. 1–46; LaMotte, Ellen N., Peking Dust, Century Publishing, New York, 1919, pp. 16–21; Franck, Harry, Wandering in North China, Century, New York, 1923, pp. 196–203. George Kates, in The Years That Were Fat, describes the city in the early 1930s, but in most respects it was little changed.

  34. Strand, p. 42.

  35. Kates, p. 87.

  36. Snow, pp. 177–8.

  37. Schram, 1, p. 93 (June 26 1916).

  38. Ibid., p. 9.

  39. By his own account, Mao left Beijing on March 14 and arrived in Shanghai two days later. He reached Changsha on April 6 (ibid., p. 317). The steamer taking his friends to France reportedly left on March 19 (Li Rui, p. 97), so it is possible that, after leaving Shanghai, Mao stopped for a few days in Nanjing. However, most of the places he told Edgar Snow he saw during this trip (pp. 178–9), he actually visited a year later. See also Zhong Wenxian, Mao Zedong: Biography, Assessment, Reminiscences, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1986, p. 41n.

  40. Zhong Wenxian, p. 234.

  41. Schram, 1, p. 174 (August 1918).

  42. Ibid., p. 317 (April 28 1919).

  43. Ibid., p. 504 (March 14 1920).

  44. Snow, p. 175.

  45. Li Rui, p. 97.

  46. The best account of the May Fourth Incident and the events that led up to it is in Chow Tse-tung, pp. 84–116. See also NCH, May 10 1919, pp. 345–9 and May 17, pp. 413–19.

  47. Kiang Wen-han, The Chinese Student Movement, New Republic Press, New York, 1948, p. 36.

  48. Chow Tse-tung, pp. 107–8.

  49. NCH, May 10 1919, p. 348.

  50. Chow Tse-tung, p. 108 (translation amended).